It sounds like a plot dreamed up by the creators of Southpark, but it’s all true: schoolchildren in Louisiana are to be taught that the Loch Ness monster is real in a bid by religious educators to disprove Darwin’s theory of evolution.
[…]
These private schools follow a fundamentalist curriculum including the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme to teach controversial religious beliefs aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism.
[…]
“One of these texts from Bob Jones University Press claims that dinosaurs were fire-breathing dragons. It has little to do with science as we currently understand. It’s more like medieval scholasticism.”

Ouch! Sorry to embarrass you, but then it was you embarrassing yourself. Something better be able to come from nothing–or else there’s no chance that your supposed “God” would exist–as “anyone with a reasonable amount of intellect and reason can work out.” It’s always the same with you makeituppers: The universe couldn’t always exist, because everything that exists must be createdtor; but, oh, sure, GOD could always exist, because…because…yeah, good luck with that. You ascribe to this “God” what you (like you count) say is impossible for the universe; Occam’s razor time, you think? Modern cosmology shows that “the physical universe can perfectly well be self-contained; it doesn’t need anything or anyone from outside to get it started, even if it had a ‘beginning.'” But then to understand today’s cosmology you do need to be someone with a reasonable amount of intellect and reason. And not, you know, you.

Ouch! Sorry to embarrass you, but then it was you embarrassing yourself. First, let’s pretend creationism is correct; what ammo does that give you to argue for the correctness of any particular religion, other than, you know, none? To leap from “the universe was created” to “there’s a God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and we Christians should be able to befoul American law to fit our puerile beliefs” is simply idiocy run amok. Second, and more importantly: Something better be able to come from nothing–or else there’s no chance that your supposed “God” could exist–as “anyone with a reasonable amount of intellect and reason can work out.” It’s always the same with you makeituppers: The universe couldn’t always exist, because everything that exists must be created; but, oh, sure, GOD could always exist, because…because…yeah, good luck with that, boob. You ascribe to this “God” what you (like you count) say is impossible for the universe; Occam’s razor time, you think? Modern cosmology shows that “the physical universe can perfectly well be self-contained; it doesn’t need anything or anyone from outside to get it started, even if it had a ‘beginning.'” But then to understand today’s cosmology you do need to be someone with a reasonable amount of intellect and reason. And not, you know, you.

I always roll my eyes when people mistake balance (more correctly equilibrium) as something “caused” or created but then again I suppose thermodynamics is too complex a subject for the dolts at Bob Jones.

Somebody (I mean some person who’s name I can’t remember, not Somebody who posts under the name of Somebody. Or other?) reminded me of the salient kernel here: Evolution is an observable fact. The Darwinian Theory of Evolution by Survival of the Fitest to the Changing Environment thru small genetic changes over Time (Sic to the Great Master) is an entirely different issue.

e4ez–if something can’t come from nothing, then logically the universe didn’t come from nothing. Also, how did god arise? And if he has always been, then why hasn’t the universe always been? You can’t disprove science by what has not yet been proven.

The classic “something from nothing” trap. Chemical and electrical reactions, etc are not “nothing.” Billions of years is not “nothing.” Too many “somethings” involved that don’t require anthropomorphizing it all to ignore by calling them “nothing.”

We may not have figured it all out yet, but just like so many things that once were attributed to ‘gods,’ we are getting there.

What happens to religion (actually, a belief in a god since religion is a now archaic political system that used that belief to wield power) when we get to the point where we can say without a shadow of a doubt that life on earth came about exactly as scientists say?

I think your definition of nothing really isn’t nothing. The question is, “How does the universe come from nothing?” Nothing meaning no electrical or chemical reactions, not even time. Absolutely nothing.

If a bank manager is caught walking out with a suitcase full of cash and he explains it by saying, “It must have materialized in there.” Would you accept his explanation? In our observable universe, we do not observe any instances where something materialized from absolutely nothing. Even in our daily lives we don’t experience this. If the universe, with all it’s material, actually came from absolutely nothing, shouldn’t we be able to observe, once in a while, this phenomenon? Yet we accept this ideal that universe came from nothing.

If you want a pretty decent explanation of how the scientific community currently thinks that the universe went about “coming from nothing”, I would recommend Brian Green’s book, “The Fabric of the Cosmos”. It can be dense reading at times, but he does a good job of explaining things in terms that a layman (like me) can understand. I’m sure your local library would have a copy.

Rob, so in this observable universe, law of thermodynamics holds true. Since the universe has existed for billions and billions of years (bobbo implies that it always existed), how is it that equilibrium hasn’t been reached?

bobbo, do you know the difference between what is necessary and contingent? Number is an example of necessary. Even if the universe don’t exist, will number still exist? Philosophers would argue that numbers are necessary. Same logic goes for God. But the universe, you, me and everything within the universe is contingent. It makes no difference whether they exist or not. Yet we exist. Why?

If parents want to teach this hogwash to their children, I pity the children, but there’s not much I can do about it. What drives me crazy is the thought that my tax dollars are supporting them in this nonsense.

Thanks for the clarity Chrisbap. I should have known that because that’s the way it works around here too. I thought I was being clever with my reply but apparently, I wasn’t that clever. Nevertheless, they still pay taxes too.

I do take your point though; we’re all paying taxes and I’m sure just about everyone could find something they don’t like paying for.

Perhaps rather than the tax argument, I should base my argument on the educational standards. Shouldn’t there be some minimum standard that private schools and home-schooling have to meet? I can accept (though not enthusiastically) that parents can teach their children whatever they want or can have religious leaders do this teaching for them. I hate it though when they call it science.

Science is a word that means something. It is a process for discovering prove-able facts about the physical world around us.

They can teach their creation stories as truth and state that they contradict science. But don’t say that they actually are science themselves. I think the reason they do this is that the general public equates “science” with “truth”. And so creationists feel the need to wrap their religious mythology in the “brand” of science in order to get people to accept it. If they baldly stated that creationism contradicts science, I think they (correctly) understand that it would become a lot less palatable to the general public.

I think you may be reacting to the fact that parents, and their wacky ideas, are often rejected by kids at some point because that’s what kids do when they mature.

However, when The State begins homogenizing the kids to believe bull, then it is harder for the kids to find different information while amongst the parroting public. The kids would receive a culture shock if they left The State.

1. I don’t know science, I just watch it on TV. My initial response to any show on “Stars” or “The Universe” is “how many of these have I already watched? – – Yes, I know we are all Star Dust.” But- – every other show tells me something I didn’t know. The knowledge base is expanding that fast. But I am limited by my lack of knowledge and brain power.

2. I can accept there being “no space” but I don’t accept there is no time. Time like numbers is a construct. Constructs exist outside of natural physics. I’m sure it all comes down to terminology, but within that failure to have agreed upon/shifting definitions is a lot of confusion.

3. My most recent: the concept of “nothing”/empty space. If space really does have positive and negative virtual particles popping into and out of existence then one might say that “nothing” does not exist, or that it does. All a matter of definition. That ambiguity does not bother me. I simply admit I don’t/can’t understand everything.

4. When I made my conditional question above regarding “if something can’t come from nothing”… I wasn’t implying anything. Just asking a question. Perhaps an implication was that logic constrains reality and maybe a god as well?

I wish I were smart enough to understand more of this. THEN what would I think about? Evaporating back hole radiation for christ sake?

Busted flat in Baton Rouge
waiting on a train
and I’m feeling near as faded as my jeans
Bobby flagged a plesiosaur down
just before a rain
we rode her all the way
to New Orleans

I pulled my textbook out of
my dirty red bandana
I was reading soft
while Bobby dissed the Jews
Nessie’s flippers flapped in time
Fire belching dragons ran through my mind
Contradicting eveything I thought I knew

Yeah, getting dumb was easier
when Bobby preached “The News”
and soon the stupid
filled me to the bone
Thank you kindly
My University
of Bobby McJones.

They also have to prove that animals can talk, the earth is flat, the sun circles the earth, you can speak with the dead, illness is caused by demons, pi is exactly equal to three, neither snake bite nor poison can kill a Christian and one third of the stars could actually fall to the ground (and fit somehow).

I think we can give them Nessie, they still have a long way to go.

But I would like to point out that “Disproving” Darwin’s theory of evolution is not the same as proving Creationism just so we’re clear on that.

they want use fighting so we are distracted. lets take the middle ground instead, and combine both theories.

perhaps something more intelligent than ourselves created the first bit of life from itself, why because? maybe it was bored and all alone, this ‘created’ life then evolved to a point where it was able to be taken over in a parasitic fashion by the master creator (or part of it) in order to experience the 3D world – thereby giving a soul/individualism to a natural evolved body.

question is now, is the mind or the soul the true master, and is either eternal, or is it all just a hologram? is its simply a broken /bad program that allows us to question this or is it the true purpose.

possibly the internal dialog we have in our head (assumed to be the good vs bad conscience etc) is simply the natural desires of the body conflicting with the higher morals of the soul?

if so then by nature we are parasitic, which is a fractal, as we also have parasites on us at smaller level that we can ignore (skin mites, flukes etc) but we are also parasitic on a planetary level and perhaps the soul is a symbiotic parasite of the body.

The Earth is only 4000 years old. Jesus rode Dinosaurs. The Loch ness monster is the Easter Bunny and the Devil planted all of the dinosaur bones. Unfortunately, religious people cannot be reasoned with. Otherwise there would be no religion all together.

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